About this weblog

Here we'll explore the nexus of legal rulings, Capitol Hill
policy-making, technical standards development, and technological
innovation that creates -- and will recreate -- the networked world as we
know it. Among the topics we'll touch on: intellectual property
conflicts, technical architecture and innovation, the evolution of
copyright, private vs. public interests in Net policy-making, lobbying
and the law, and more.

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this weblog are those of the authors and not of their respective institutions.

November 21, 2005

BBC Catalogs Sony's Woes

Posted by Alan Wexelblat

An anonymous copyfighter pointed me to this story on the BBC detailing the Sony debacle. The story by Canadian law professor Michael Geist paints a picture of a bad situation spiraling totally out of control. I particularly like the unnamed Cartel exec doing his best Michael Brown "how wrong can you get in one sentence or less" impression. Trust me, bozo, consumers may not be able to describe what a 'rootkit' is, but they've heard the word enough to know it's Something Bad and when your product gets linked to public scare words like 'rootkit' and 'spyware' you are in a heap of trouble.

Plus, do you really want to be the one getting called out on the carpet by the US Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary of policy? His words ought to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every Cartel exec: "it's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property - it's not your computer." Amen.

Geist points out that other publicity debacles (e.g. the poisoned Tylenol scare) led to long-term changes in marketing and business models by the affacted industries and calls on the music industry to take this to heart.